The moon shone softly behind a haze of midnight coolness, rising from the earth to blur the clear circle of her heavenly rim.
There was a breathlessness in the very stillness of the night, that was broken only by the distant wailing of the lambs new-separate from their mothers.
Hark! What was it they were calling? Faint and far away, what was it?
"Aura! Aura! Aura!"
Up in the corries, setting the tall brackens a-quiver, high on the birch woods hidden in their silver, higher still among the tumbled rocks of the "Eye of the World," what was that passing?
Was it, white and dim, a wandering sheep looming large upon the moonlit mountainside as it sought to answer the cry, or, this midsummer night when the spirits wander, was it a restless wraith seeking it knew not what?
Or was it Aura herself, free and fearless among the hills?
"Aura! Aura! Aura!"
The faint, far--distant call sounded from the valley, from the corries, from the birch woods, from the rocks.
The shadows lay so still, so soft, yet that one surely moved--moved upwards.